Don McCullin Quotes

There is no truth in photography. One can't reproduce an absolute truth. That said, I don't see [my photographs] as being any less truthful than any other photographs.

For this very reason I refuse all the tricks of the trade and professional virtuosity which could make me betray my career. As soon as I find a subject which interests me, I leave it to the lens to record it truthfully. Look at the reporters and at the amateur photographer! They both have only one goal; to record a memory or a document. And that is pure photography.

Good art however 'immoral' is wholly a thing of virtue. Good art can NOT be immoral. By good art I mean art that bears true witness, I mean the art that is most precise.

If nothing will finally survive of life besides what artists report of it, we have no right to report what we know to be lies.

When the good pictures come, we hope they tell truths, but truths 'told slant,' just as Emily Dickinson commanded.

Not all artists have a responsibility to be socially or politically aware, but they do have a responsibility to make great art. They have to find some truth and put that in their music.

I try to be a truthful artist and I try to show a level of courage. I enjoy that. I'm a messenger.

For when it is the good that is under consideration, and the ethical object is predominant, truth must be considered more in reference to art than science, if, that is, unity is to be preserved in the work generally.

What motivates me in art is the ugly and beautiful nature of the truth. It has to be truthful and honest, even if it is ugly and grotesque.

What I've discovered is that in art, as in music, there's a lot of truth-and then there's a lie. The artist is essentially creating his work to make this lie a truth, but he slides it in amongst all the others. The tiny little lie is the moment I live for, my moment. It's the moment that the audience falls in love.

You have these relationships with people that you care about, but I also try to stick to my job as filmmaker and be fair and truthful about what I saw and my experience of the people, hopefully informed by a deep understanding of them.

I am only interested in painting the actual person, in doing a painting of them, not in using them to some ulterior end of art. For me, to use someone doing something not native to them would be wrong.

It is the glory and good of Art, That Art remains the one way possible Of speaking truth, to mouths like mine at least.

I'm not just painting for painting's sake. I want to be truthful.

People believe that photographs are true and therefore cannot be art.

I was not out to paint beautiful pictures; even painting good pictures was not important to me. I wanted only to help the truth burst forth.

Artists are the gatekeepers of truth.

Great pictures can't be entirely fictitious.

In general I think that in art you only have the responsibility to tell the truth.

I want to remove the curtain of pretence from all of my characters.

Artistic honesty sometimes prevents an artist from being born.

It's good to be employable, but I hope to show the truth. The paintings seem true because nobody wants me to do them.

When I write I don't aim to shock people, and I'm surprised when I do. But I don't think that anything that occurs in life should be omitted from art, though the artist should present it in a fashion that is artistic and not ugly. I set out to tell the truth. And sometimes the truth is shocking.

The fine arts once divorcing themselves from truth are quite certain to fall mad, if they do not die.

The writer concerned more with technique than truth becomes a technician, not an artist.